


Shots & Stories

by spacekidmax



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Dirk Strider and Dave's Bro Aren't the Same Person, Dirk Strider: ultimate cockblock, Humanstuck, Implied/Referenced Abusive Relationship, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Underage Drinking, flip-flops dramatically from humorous to angsty and back several times but with a happy ending, karkat-typical self-hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:29:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23818477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacekidmax/pseuds/spacekidmax
Summary: Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you don't like parties, people, or socializing. So you have no idea why the hell you thought coming to Dave's homecoming party would be a fun way to spend your night. Oh yeah, it's cause said host of such party asked you to come, and for all the complaining you do about and to him, he is kind of one of your only friends. And maybe, you secretly really like hanging out with him. Well, perhaps since he's just as useless at this partying thing as you are and would rather just hang out in his bedroom with you, the night won't be so bad. At least he's brought a bottle of alcohol, and knowledge of a party game that he made up called Shots & Stories. Hell, maybe you'll even learn something about him, finally get a look at whatever hides behind his ironic persona and those sunglasses he never takes off.
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 155





	Shots & Stories

**Author's Note:**

> Is posting my first Homestuck fic before I'm even done reading the main comic a good idea? Not necessarily, but hell, I'm halfway through act six and barely any of this comes from after act five anyways. Really hope Kankri doesn't get some kind of redemption arc that I haven't gotten to yet cause I've kind of made him out to be a total asshole here, but c'est la vie. I spent an entire hour coding in all of the italics cause I'm gay and that's how I show emotion. But this is my first time ever having to deal with HTML, and I already had to fix it once, so if something looks fucky, please tell me in the comments.

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you kind of can’t believe you showed up at Dave’s apartment like this. Because he’s having a goddamn homecoming party. So far, it’s entirely awkward, seeing as you knew all of four people that were supposed to be there, including the host, but you’d showed up because, well, you genuinely liked hanging out with him, and this was an excuse to do so. Not that you’d ever tell him that. 

You like to outwardly pretend you don’t know why “cool kid Strider” with his unshakable fake aloofness and seven layers of irony is someone you willingly associate yourself with, but you know deep down that it’s because the bastard is just too damn determined. He just showed up, on the first day of senior year, when you were a bundle of nerves and overly defensive shouting, planted himself in your life, and refused to let go no matter how much you cursed at him or glared and distanced yourself from his friends. 

You had just wanted to get through senior year with no bullshit, no attachment, a fresh start where you could just stay off everyone’s radar and then fuck off after graduation without anyone ever really knowing you were here in the first place. But that plan had failed the second Dave “insufferable bastard” Strider had laid his sunglasses on you with his dumb smirk and smooth voice and asked “what’s up, newbie?” in your third period English class. And then had just had to have three other classes with you, including lunch. So here you were, two months later, with a grand total of four friends. Four more than you’d wanted… but they weren’t so bad, you guessed. They were certainly more than you thought you deserved.

You don’t like crowds, or people in general, so Dave’s apartment, jam-packed full of high schoolers, is not exactly your scene. But the idiot had pouted like a six-year-old when you’d told him there was no way in hell you were showing up to his dumb homecoming party, and that you didn’t care about school spirit or homecoming anyways. He’d just raised his eyebrows from under those infuriating sunglasses he refuses to take off, and told you “you think I give a shit about homecoming? I just wanna throw a party.” You hadn’t had anything to say about that, so you’d just rolled your eyes and told him you’d think about it. But that was a week ago, and here you were.

You traverse crowds of semi-drunk to wasted high schoolers, holding red cups that, knowing Strider, were bought just for the “irony of it all.” Finally, you find him grabbing a bottle of alcohol from one of his kitchen cabinets, and he gives you a casual wave when he notices you standing in his kitchen semi-awkwardly.

“Hey Karkles, party’s been raging for an hour. Thought you weren’t gonna show.”

“One, don’t call me that, and two, I thought I wasn’t gonna show either, but I realized I just didn’t have anything better to do then come get wasted with a whole bunch of strangers, slurring the lyrics to pop songs and laughing at shit that isn’t at all funny. What’s with the music, anyway? Don’t you DJ or something? You should have something more tolerable than this top 40 garbage.”

He sighs overdramatically, putting the bottle down on the counter and brushing the hair out of his face. “Yeah, that’s what I get for letting John help me with any of the prep. He and Jade ganged up on me and convinced me that if I played shit no one had heard of, the “vibe would be off.” He used air quotes around the words and you had the feeling he was quoting one of them directly.

You fidget nervously. “So, uh, what does one do at a party? My old friends… weren’t exactly the type to throw blowout high school teen movie parties.”

He smirks infuriatingly. “Get wasted, obviously. After that, I don’t know. I’ll let you in on a secret, this is kind of my first one as well. Figured I should do it for ironic purposes now that I’m a senior. Didn’t expect word to travel this quickly, but that’s what happens when you’re giving out alcohol I guess.”

“And when you’re friends with Jade, who gets along with every single person in the school.”

He shrugs. “That too.”

“Speaking of which, where are the other three?”

Dave bites his lip. “You haven’t run into them yet? Shit. They kinda all disappeared on me once the crowd started growing. At one point I got a glimpse of Rose chugging wine straight from the bottle, which is weird, cause I’m fairly certain I didn’t have any wine. But besides that, who knows. They’re all sociable enough, though, they’ll be okay.”

“I wonder if Rose is finally gonna get with that chick she’s been so cagey about for the past few weeks.”

Dave laughs, and you make a conscious effort not to find the sound appealing. You fail. “Kanaya? Wouldn’t surprise me, she was texting her all afternoon while we were getting supplies and setting up, and she told me earlier that she'd be coming tonight. Perhaps we'll finally be able to meet the elusive creature that Rose is always talking about.”

You huff, but there’s no actual malice behind the sound. “I can't believe Rose has a semi-girlfriend from another school. That sounds like the fakest shit ever, but knowing her, it is incredibly real. If I have to watch those two make out on your couch, after everything Rose said about having “no chance in hell with her” I am going to lose it.”

“I’m with you there. So, you wanna, go out and… mingle? Party? I don’t know, talk to people?”

You shoot him a Look. “God, no. I hate socializing.”

He laughs again, and it’s annoyingly cute. “Why, again, are you here?”

You stick your tongue out at him. “Someone begged me to come. Don’t know if you know him. He’s this loser who’s got an obsession with irony far beyond something healthy, has this stupid blond hair, wears sunglasses inside even though it makes him look like a tool?”

He smiles, widely, and you bite your lip to prevent yourself from doing the same. “You wound me, Karkles. Fine, then, if you don’t want to socialize, what do you want to do?”

You… didn’t expect him to ask. To be honest, you expected him to leave you here so he could go hang out with the people that actually wanted to party. “I, uh, don’t know.”

He picks up the bottle he’d grabbed from the cabinet when you’d walked in and looks at you with mischief in his eyes. “You wanna hang out in my room and play Shots & Stories? It’s a game Rose and I came up with last year, it’s like 20 questions, but every time the other person asks a question, you have to take a shot before answering. And the answers have to be at least three sentences long, so they’re, you know, actual stories or something.”

“You’d ditch the party that you’re throwing to hang out with me in your room?”

“Is that not the ultimate act of irony? Throwing the big high school party, complete with Solo cups and everything, just to ditch it cause it sucks?”

You roll your eyes. Of course, it’s always the irony, you think, but he continues, somewhat sheepishly. “And I just kinda want to hang out with you.”

You do not understand Dave Strider. Of all the people here, of all his friends, those you know and those you don’t, people he’s known probably all four years of high school, he wants to hang out with you? He’s permanently a mystery to you, and you’re just as determined to figure him out as he was to befriend you. And if he’s succeeded in his goal, (not that you’d admit it) you’re sure you can in yours. You shrug. “Sure, I guess that could be fun.”

Dave brightens and grabs two shot glasses from a cabinet that has an impressive, or concerning, amount of them, depending on how you look at it. They’re both incredibly kitschy, one of them has a picture of a donkey on it and says “lost my ass in Los Vegas,” and the other has the Hooters logo on it. He throws you the first one, and somehow, miraculously, you catch it. You wonder how he got the glass, seeing as Houston, Texas, is nowhere near Los Vegas, but knowing him, it could be anything. With a shot glass in one hand and a bottle of alcohol labeled Fireball, something you have never even heard of, in the other, he gestures out of the kitchen, and starts off towards his room. You follow, never having been to his apartment, and therefore not knowing where his bedroom is. He opens the door to his room a crack, peering in, presumably to make sure no one is doing the nasty on his bed, and shoots you a thumbs up. Someone you’ve never seen before wolf whistles as he watches the two of you sneak away from the party and into Dave’s room, but Dave just smiles and casually flips them off. He locks the door behind you.

“There, that should keep any interested couples out.”

You glance around the room. It’s certainly, a lot. Posters line the walls, and cables snake around the floor, leading to various electronics that are probably for Dave’s music-making hobby. There’s a sizable turntable against one wall, with… a pair of katanas mounted above it? You decide not to ask. Dave flops down on the floor in the center of the room, and you join him, sitting across from him, the bottle of Fireball separating the two of you. He unscrews the cap and grins. You let yourself smile, a little bit.

Dave holds up the bottle of Fireball. “You want me to start, since you’ve never played before?”

“Nah, I’ve got a good one, I’ll start.”

He pours himself a shot, and smirks. “Shoot.”

“How’d you get your parents to let you have a party, especially unsupervised? My Dad’s all over me, all the time. No way in hell I could do something like this.”

He takes the shot seamlessly, shaking his head. “Sometimes I forget you’ve only been around for a couple months. It’s cause I don’t have any. Died when I was little. I live with my Bro, and he doesn’t give a shit what I do when he’s away as long as I replace any alcohol that gets drunk and the place isn’t in shambles when he returns. My turn!”

You grab the bottle from him and pour yourself what looks to be approximately the right about of alcohol. You’re, uh, not the most experienced at taking shots. Meaning this is the first time you’ve ever taken one. You hold up the glass and raise your eyebrows at him. “Go on.”

“Why’d you switch schools? Thought I should go easy on you for your first round.”

You swallow a deep sigh. You could lie, or give some generic excuse like you do to any stranger that asks, but that would be shitty of you. Honestly, you’re kind of surprised he hadn’t asked earlier. Though you’re not sure if you would’ve told him the truth if he had. You don’t know why you want so much to tell him the truth now. Usually you don’t care about lying to people when they stick their noses somewhere you don’t want them to be. Well, first shot, then thoughts. You tip back the alcohol, swallowing it as quickly as possible, and oh SHIT that burns. You’d known alcohol tastes bad, but god, fuck, that is HORRIBLE. You hear Dave laugh at the face you must be making, but you are in legitimate pain and feel like cursing existence itself.

“You ever have Fireball before or what?”

Dave’s still laughing, and you slowly raise your middle finger at him, glowering. The way his tongue pokes between his teeth when he laughs does distract you from the pain in your throat though. And then you think about the story you have to tell and cringe again. Might as well get this over with.

“I switched cause my best friend at my old school freaked and tried to kill two people. You might’ve seen it in the local news last year, I don’t know. His name was Gamzee. He brought a knife to school and everything, one of the kids had to go to the hospital cause he got stabbed in the leg. He threatened to kill me too, over text in the middle of pre-calculus, and instead of attempting to calm him down, I ran and hid in the bathroom like a fucking coward. He’s not some kinda school shooter asshat, though, he… he was going through a lot. He was on drugs and stuff, pretty sure he was self-medicating some heavy shit. I don’t know, he never told me. His dad was real cult-y, and also kind of a terrible person, so when he found out, he made him quit cold turkey. Well, that was three days before he went on his attempted murder spree, so I think he just snapped. Couldn’t handle the withdrawal. Went crazy. He’s probably in juvie, or maybe a mental asylum, now. Happened two weeks before school ended last year and my dad “didn’t want me in that environment anymore.” One of the few things I agreed with him on.”

Dave is silent after that, with that, “oh shit, I don’t know what to say to that” look that you’re used to getting whenever you have to tell the story. You’ve mostly gotten over it, or you’d like to think you have. You smirk in the way that means nothing is funny, but you’re pretending it is. “So much for going easy on me for my first round.”

Dave bites his lip, looking at the ground. “Yeah. You, uh, okay?”

You shrug casually. “I guess. It happened, what, five months ago? So, I’ve had some time to deal with it and stuff.”

Dave hums, but doesn’t say anything after that. You figure it’s time for a subject change. “Okay, my turn now. What’s living with your brother like? I don’t have any siblings, so I don’t really know.”

Dave’s face goes blank for a split second before he picks the bottle of Fireball up and drinks straight from it, bypassing the shot glass altogether. Yeah, you feel that. Kankri’s not winning any father of the year awards either. He puts the bottle down and words immediately start pouring from his mouth.

“I actually have two brothers. Bro’s fourteen years older than me, my parents had him when they were super young, and then my other brother, Dirk, he’s only three years older than me. He’s in college right now, and he’s _wicked_ smart, like actual certified genius-level type of shit. He’s really good with robotics and stuff, he built me my very first mixer for my birthday when I was eleven and first starting to get into making music. We were really tight as kids, still are to some degree. He went out of state, but we video chat at least once a week if he’s not too busy. Bro’s, cool.” 

His face twitches a little when he calls his oldest brother cool, something you notice, but don’t say anything about, because what do you even say to that? “He’s been taking care of me and Dirk since our parents died when I was five. Car accident, real tragic, blah blah blah. I don’t remember much about them, to be entirely honest. Dirk does, but he was eight, so that makes more sense. Bro’s kind of a master of all things irony, so that’s where I get that from, I guess. And DJ shit, he does that too. That’s where he is now, actually, off somewhere for a gig. He’s also obsessed with puppets, for some reason. I _think_ it’s ironic, cause pretty much everything about him is, but it’s still… a lot. So yeah, my brothers. They’re pretty awesome dudes.”

He spoke a lot more about Dirk than he did his oldest brother, whose real name he didn’t even mention. You don’t ask. You get it, at least to some degree. You don’t think you’ve ever met anyone with normal, happily married, nuclear family, white picket fence, type parents, and to be honest, you’re not sure they exist. You shoot Dave a smile, and he smiles back. It’s a little too forced, and you pretend not to notice. Soon enough, though, Dave has another question for you.

“So, what kinda stuff do you get up to when you’re not snarking it up with us over Pesterchum?”

You decide to follow Dave in drinking straight from the bottle, not sure if it would be considered bad form, but also not really caring all that much. You figure if Strider has an issue with it, he can say something, but he just stays silent. You have to think about what to say for a second, you’ve been pretty busy with school and friends lately. “Well, I’ve been learning how to code. Specifically viruses, cause I think it’s a fun way to fuck with people. I’ve been doing it with another one of my friends from my old school, Sollux, he’s okay, I swear, nothing like Gamzee, he’s just a huge fucking nerd. He’s super into programming and shit though, so he’s been teaching me. I’m kinda absolutely horrible at it, especially compared to him, but I’m learning.”

“That’s so cool!” He says enthusiastically, and you’re not sure you’ve ever seen him be this visibly excited about anything. The knowledge that it’s you that’s made him this excited definitely makes you feel… something.

You shrug. “I guess. If you ever have any enemies, just hit me up and I can attempt to infect their phones with the shittiest viruses on planet Earth. No guarantee they’ll do anything, but I can try.” 

Dave downright fucking _giggles,_ and god, human beings shouldn’t be allowed to be that pretty. He should get a fucking fine for that. A goddamn citation. A cease and desist letter on behalf of your emotions, damn them. 

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He grabs the bottle and flashes you a smile, all teeth. It’s aggravatingly adorable. “Your turn!”

You blank for a moment, suddenly conscious of the fact that you may have been staring at him for who knows how long. So you throw out the first thing that comes to mind. “How’d you meet Rose, John, and Jade?”

He seems surprised for a second that that’s what you want to know, but shrugs and takes a swig. “Well, Rose’s mom and my mom were friends from college or something, so I’ve known her since the two of us were literal babies. Honestly, it feels like she’s more like my twin sister than my friend most of the time. I’m pretty sure at this point, the Lalondes have a bedroom that’s completely dedicated for whenever I sleep over. But their place is huge, so that’s not super surprising. John I actually didn’t meet until fifth grade, when he moved here from Washington. It was like something out of a movie, I saw him getting beat up on the playground during recess and I kicked three people’s asses for him.”

You roll your eyes. “Really? I can’t imagine you being able to kick anyone’s ass, you’re a fucking twig, Strider.”

Dave just smirks. “I have my ways. Anyways, I kicked three sixth-graders’ asses for him, got suspended for four days for it, and after that, we were inseparable.”

“Why’d you do it? Come to the defense of some kid you didn’t even know? Just, out of some kind of sense of justice, or what?”

Dave’s tone softens a bit. “I mean, I already didn’t like the people that were doing it, they were little asshats, and maybe part of it was that I finally had an excuse to go at them. But I also just saw this scrawny, dorky little kid, who at the time had those stereotypical nerd glasses with the thick plastic frames. He looked like he wouldn’t hurt a fly even if you paid him, and he was just trying to get along with everyone, but these eleven-year-olds with superiority complexes just cause they were a grade above him were just being real fucking nasty to him, hurling slurs, shoving him around. And something within me was just like, hey, I gotta save this little dumbass before he gets the shit beat out of him. Of course, they started wailing on him before I got there, but he wasn’t that badly hurt or anything by the time I intervened. I don’t know, maybe I just had this sixth sense of “oh man I gotta befriend that guy,” like the same shit I had when I first saw your surly ass walk into school and get lost on the way to your first-period class.”

You’re _not_ blushing. At least, you really hope you aren’t. “Oh, so that’s why my harsh and repellent personality didn’t make you fuck off within the first week of existing in my periphery? Cause you had a “sixth sense” about me? Good, I thought my natural defenses were weakening.”

He reaches over the bottle to ruffle your curly hair and you punch him in the shoulder, playfully, but hard, cause no one is allowed to fuck with your hair. “Nah, your attempts to repel me could never win against the Strider determination. When Striders set their sights on something, nothing but Satan himself could get us to fuck off outta the way.”

You scoff, and he continues his story. “Anyways, so once John and I became super hella besties, he introduced me to Jade, since, you know, duh, those two have known each other their entire lives, and the quadrangle was formed.”

You wonder briefly why he made it sound obvious that John and Jade knew each other, but decide you’d rather fuck with him than ask. “Is quadrangle even a word? Cause if it is, I feel like you’re not using it right.”

Dave shrugs, smiling lazily. “Dunno, it sounded better than quartet. That just makes it sound like we’re all band nerds or something.”

You fake a dramatic gasp. “As a former band kid, I am offended.”

“Yeah, yeah, me too, so I’m allowed to make fun.”

Dave Strider, a band kid? For some reason, that makes sense, and not just because of his current musical talents. “Really? What’d you play?”

He does finger guns at you. “Saxophone, duh. Only the coolest of instruments. But only for fifth grade, after that, I was more into making my own music and doing dope ass DJ shit. What about you?”

“Trumpet, all four years of middle school. Kankri was real encouraging, thought such an “aggressive” aka obnoxious, instrument would be a good way to get my anger out. I was really shit at it, but I kept it up cause I could tell the noise of me practicing annoyed him, no matter how outwardly supportive he acted. I quit before I started high school cause the other band kids irritated me and I didn’t really give enough of a shit about the gag to continue with having to practice and stuff.”

Dave looks at you with a strange expression, and you remember that not everyone has the same dynamic with their parents that you and Kankri have, which is just basically eternally pissy roommates who hate each other but one of them at least pretends he doesn’t. You’re about to bring it up and explain, when he speaks.

“Yeah, trumpet fits you. But anyhow, speaking of the other three, what happened between you and John when you first got here? I mean, you weren’t exactly friendly to any of us, but damn, for the first two or three weeks at least, it seemed like you hated his guts. Which is weird, cause John’s pretty pacifistic and generally an obscenely nice person, except when he’s being a dumbfuck and he says something stupid enough to accidentally hurt somebody’s feelings. Even then though, he’ll spend all of his time and energy trying to apologize and learn from his mistakes. He’s a good dude like that. He actually asked me if he’d done something, and I had no idea, but eventually, you seemed to get over it, whatever it was. I’m not mad or anything, John’s one of my best friends, but he can be a total idiot sometimes, so I’m just curious what he did to set you off so bad.”

Any explanation about Kankri is completely forgotten. Oh god, you’d been waiting for this to come up. You take an extra-large gulp of Fireball, straight from the bottle again, and it still burns like hell, but you think you might be getting used to it. The extra pain from your large, probably closer to two shots than one, drink is worth it though, or it will be, you hope. Dave looks at you strangely as you grimace from the alcohol burn, bottle still clutched in your hand. You sigh, a full-body shudder moving through you as you put the bottle back between the two of you.

“I gotta warn you, this one’s pretty depressing. Not exactly fun party game type of shit. Then again, neither was my first one.”

Dave looks at you with concern. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I could think of another question.”

You shake your head. “No, it’s alright. You deserve to know. I was real shitty to him, and really, he didn’t deserve it. I did apologize to him, after I got my head out of my own ass. Yeah, me, apologize. Don’t look at me like that, Strider, I did.”

Dave’s looking at you with his eyebrows raised, like he almost doesn’t believe you. You flip him off and he smiles, so you continue on with your story.

“But I, uh, never told John why I was so hell-bent on hating him. Cause the truth is, he didn’t do anything. He just, fuck, he reminded me of someone. So much that I wanted nothing to do with him. Couldn’t deal with that a second time around or else I’d lose my shit completely, so I tried to block him out. I thought if I made John hate me, by being an all-around shitrag, I wouldn’t have to be around to watch him implode like I did… this kid. His name was Tavros, and he was one of my other best friends from my old school. He was the sweetest dude in existence. Had really bad self-esteem issues and a stutter like nobody’s fucking business. Not exactly king of popularity, but he was still super positive and bubbly, just like John, and sounded a lot like him, too. The first time I heard John’s voice, well, I didn’t see him talking, and I actually whipped my head around cause I thought it, somehow, was Tav. Of course, when I saw that it wasn’t him, and was just some random kid looking at me strangely for reacting the way I did, I just scowled at him, cause I was embarrassed. After that, hearing John talk, especially to you guys, his friends, just hearing him being excited about any and everything like he always is, it hurt like hell, so I took it out on him. Cause, well, the thing with Tavros is that I would’ve killed for him. I kinda hung out with the, uh, outcasts, if it isn’t becoming entirely apparent. So me and a couple other people I considered my friends back then, were kind of all this dude had. Until one day, at the start of junior year, he gets approached by this girl, Vriska, outta nowhere. Now, she was no prom queen cheerleader, far from it. The jock chick type, on every girls’ sports team that was offered, though to be honest, for my old school, that wasn’t a lot. She was crazy intelligent too, they met working on a project for advanced trig or some shit like that. So basically, incredibly out of his league. He fell head over heels for her, and she took notice of it and asked him out cause god knows he wouldn’t have done it himself. So they started dating. And turns out she was a manipulative, abusive, bitch. She went hunting for every issue he had, and believe me, there were a lot of them. And she grabbed onto them like puppet strings until he was wound around her pinky finger six ways from Sunday. We tried, me and the rest of my little group, we tried to make him see what she was doing to him, but, we just couldn’t untangle him from her grasp. That bitch could slap him in the face and five minutes later, _he’d_ be the one apologizing. It went downhill fast, and by the end of the year, the kid was just a shadow of his old self, and all he had to say for worshipping his girlfriend all those months was, at one point, a pair of broken legs. And that, is why I am extraordinarily wary of love. Well, that and other shit but I don’t wanna get into it.”

You impulsively grab the bottle and take another swig, trying not to think about what you just said. Trying not to think of Dave Strider sitting across from you with a concerned, faraway look in his eyes, like he’s pondering some kind of otherworldly bullshit. Dave Strider and his stupidly pretty hair, and his dumb fucking smile and the way he raises his eyebrows above his sunglasses at you whenever someone says something really idiotic in world history and you have to keep yourself from laughing. Trying not to think of the way love has caused you nothing but fleeting moments of happiness and lasting memories of pain. 

Trying not to think about your ex-girlfriend, who was, to be fair, a generally good person, but had gotten to you too late when you’d already built up all your spiny layers of defensiveness, from having to deal with Kankri’s parenting your entire life, and also from being generally small, weak, and easy to pick on for many reasons over the years. And so she just kept peeling you like an onion and crying cause it was just all the same bullshit underneath no matter how hard she tried to get you to be sincere with her, for fucking once. And one day she just left the school, never came back, blocked your number and the word going around was that Vriska, who she’d never really gotten along with, had gone psycho on her and fucked up her eyes, and so she transferred out to a special school for the blind or something. The day you realized she wasn’t coming back and had you blocked everywhere, you’d paid Gamzee twenty bucks for the sweetest, most pussy alcohol he could get his hands on. When he’d given it to you at the end of the day, you’d gone home and drunk half the bottle by yourself, cried a whole bunch, and then passed out on your bedroom floor in the fetal position. You’d slept through several of your alarms and threw up a whole lot the next morning so Kankri had been eternally generous by letting you stay home from school and mope. Mostly cause he’d thought you had a stomach bug.

You don’t realize you’re spacing out and probably spiraling until you feel Dave gently tug on the bottle of Fireball. Your right hand had gone white from gripping it too hard. He’s got a look that’s somewhere between concerned and unnerved on his face, and you release the bottle of alcohol from your hand. He puts it on the floor, closer to him than it is to you.

“Sorry. Overthinking I guess. This game always supposed to be so heavy?”

Dave laughs, but it’s slightly hollow. “Yeah, it always ended up being like this whenever Rose and I played, but I figured that was just our dynamic. For us though, I think maybe we might just have shitty luck at picking questions. Do you want to stop playing?”

You shrug. “If you do. I’ll keep playing though, maybe try to figure out what won’t make us both depressed. If you want to, that is.”

He smiles a small but sincere smile. “Yeah, we could try that.”

You think for a second, and then one hits you. “Okay. What’s the dumbest long term decision you’ve ever made?”

He snorts, grinning. He takes a shot, or what would probably be an approximation of one, since he’s continuing not to use his shot glass. You have a sneaking suspicion that both of you have abandoned the tacky little glasses. 

“Alright, alright. Now suspend your disbelief for this one, cause I was twelve here. And twelve-year-old me was stupid at levels probably never recorded before. Like, groundbreaking levels of stupid. If they’d been able to measure how stupid I was from ages like, ten to thirteen, I probably would’ve broken world records. Would’ve won awards for just how stupid I was. The dumbest long term decision I’ve ever made was having a crush on Jade for six months. Six whole fucking months!”

You look at him, confused. Dave Strider continues to be a mystery to you. He looks back at you like he’s expecting you to burst out laughing, and then you can see a lightbulb go off over his head.

“Dude. Dude, do you _not_ know? After hanging out with me for two whole months, has it still somehow not occurred to you? Karkat, I’m super fucking gay. Jade was my last, final hurrah of repression when I was twelve. In retrospect, I had a giant massive gay crush on John at the exact same time I was desperately trying to pretend I had a crush on Jade. Of course, by the time Johnny boy got out of his “no homo” phase, and realized he was queer as fuck like the rest of us, I’d gotten over him, but there’s no way in hell the two of us would’ve worked romantically anyways. Just, the pure _irony_ of it all. Me, twelve years old, deeply closeted and so, so in love with my male best friend. This cannot stand, cannot threaten my precious worldview. So what do I do? Attempt to convince myself that instead, I have a crush on his COUSIN.”

You interrupt him there. “Woah woah woah, wait, John and Jade are cousins? How did I not know this? I mean, it makes sense now, they practically act like twins, and they look pretty similar too, but how did I not figure that out sooner?”

Dave shrugs over-dramatically. “God, I can’t believe I was a closeted genius of irony at age twelve. I think that was my peak. Karkles, what am I going to do with myself now? I don’t think I could ever top that!”

You hate when he makes you laugh like this. You really do, you swear. But it feels so nice. “Oh by the way, since you told me, figured I should tell you, as _I_ don’t expect my general demeanor to get it across, I’m bi.”

Dave grins again, leaning over the bottle, holding out his hand for a high-five. “Hell yeah, queer club!”

You roll your eyes, and reluctantly high-five him. “No brain cells club is more like it. Are you drunk?”

Dave sticks his tongue out. “Why do you ask?”

“Cause you’ve had like, what, four shots? What are you, a lightweight?”

Dave scrunches his nose at you, and it’s fucking adorable. “First off, three of those were not technically shots cause I didn’t drink from a shot glass and just eyeballed it. Secondly, I’m fairly certain I’m just tipsy so I’m rolling with it. Thirdly, I had a whole cup of some shit I don’t remember, when the party was first starting to really fill out, like half an hour before you showed up. So that’s probably still affecting me or something.”

You smile mischievously at him. “Oh my god. Dave Strider, intense guardian of his aloof and “super cool” persona, is a goddamn lightweight. That is the least cool shit I’ve ever seen, and therefore, fucking hilarious.”

“I’m not a lightweight,” He whines, and you’re “fairly certain” that there’s no way in hell he’s “just tipsy.”

“Okay, okay. It’s your turn, you know.”

He straightened up at that. “Oh! Cool. So, have you always lived here in Houston, or did you move here when you switched schools?”

Huh, you hadn’t expected him to ask that. Not that it was the most interesting, it was just kind of a strange question. “I haven’t always lived in Houston, but I was already living here when I switched districts. I moved to Houston when I was ten, right at the start of fifth grade, all the way from upstate New York. And let me tell you, if you ever want to fuck up a child, make them move an entire time zone and a twenty-two hour drive away from all of their friends, just when they’re entering the worst time in their life- middle school. To somewhere so completely alien, that not only does everyone speak in a wildly different accent, they get made fun of for not having that accent. Fifth grade was an interesting time, to say the least. But I eventually got over myself, learned to close myself off so nobody could see what I didn’t want them too, and realized that the only people at that school who were actually willing to befriend the annoying, pissed off little kid with an inferiority complex and northern accent, were also the only people worth hanging out with. So yeah, made a few friends, stuck with those friends all throughout middle school and high school, and watched them all implode in different ways, Sollux being the only one who’s even vaguely okay at this point, myself included. Though at one point, I was the only one of the five of us with anything even close to mental stability, and let me tell you, that was a scary time to be alive.”

Dave interrupts you, confused. “Five of you? Who was the fifth one?”

Oh yeah, you always forget about Eridan. It does make you really happy to realize that Dave's been paying attention to your dumb stories to the level that he'd put together that the three people you'd already talked about, plus yourself, made four parts of your quintet of a friend group. “His name was Eridan, and he was kind of an asshole, but like, in a vaguely endearing way? I don’t know, he was one of those people who thought he could’ve been a popular kid if he wanted to be, when in reality, he was obsessed with Harry Potter and genuinely believed he could do magic for multiple years in middle school. Towards the end of sophomore year, he and Sollux started to like, absolutely hate each other’s guts, cause of a thing with a girl that Eridan liked, but she didn’t like him back and started dating Sollux. I don’t know, they didn’t last or anything, but neither of them could let it go, so Eridan kind of faded out of the group for a while and started hanging out with other people. I still talked to him on Pesterchum though. The two of them did get over themselves towards the end of the year last year though, and from what I hear now, they’re sort of friends again? I don’t really know what’s going on with them, like ever. Yeah, anyway, I guess what I could’ve said in one sentence instead of like, twelve, was that I’ve been living here in Houston since I was ten, I just happened to be on the edge of two school districts, and Kankri put me in South Valor cause they had better test scores or something. Sorry I kind of went off on a tangent there about my old friends and stuff.”

Dave smirks. “You know the entire point of all of this is that we’re telling stories, right? So you’re literally following the rules by going off on tangents and saying stuff in “twelve sentences instead of one.” That’s like, the goal of the game. Trust me, when I made it up I was thinking of it as a way to let myself ramble about whatever the hell I wanted with a friend while also getting progressively shitfaced.”

It makes you feel a lot better about yourself that he likes to ramble about stuff too. You suppose you’d already kind of known that, but it was nice to hear from Dave himself that not only was your rambling okay and not boring as hell like it frequently was for other people, but that it was the whole point of the game and he did it too.

When you don’t say anything, Dave adds on to his own point. “Besides, you tell really interesting stories. I like listening to you talk about stuff.”

If you’re blushing, you blame it _fully_ on the alcohol. “You do?”

Dave laughs. “Yeah.”

He says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and maybe that makes your heart skip a beat. But it’s not like that means anything. “Oh. Um, it’s my turn right? To ask a question?”

He raises his eyebrows. “Yeah.”

Oh shit, you didn’t actually have a question ready. “Uh… how’d you get that scar on your face?”

He looks at you with confusion. “What do you mean?”

“The one near your right eye, pokes out a little from under your glasses.”

Dave makes no effort to hide his disbelief. “You _noticed_ that? Damn, I can’t remember the last time somebody asked about that. I figured my bomb ass aviators hid it.”

Oh god, oh fuck, the only reason you’ve ever noticed it is because you’ve probably committed every detail of his face to memory with the number of times you’ve caught yourself staring at him. Not that you mean to be staring at him, it’s just, god, he’s annoying, but he’s got a cute face, okay? He’s goddamn pretty, you’ll fucking admit it. And maybe he’s really not as infuriating as you always say he is. Or think he is. He’s actually kind of nice once you get past the ironic “cool kid” persona. And you really want to kiss him. Wait, what? Shit, you’re drunk. You must be. Cause there’s no way in hell you’d be thinking about kissing Dave fucking Strider if you were at all sober, no matter how fucking pretty his face is. At least, not consciously. And definitely not while he’s in the goddamn room.

And suddenly he’s waving his hand in front of your face and you notice you’ve been freaking out for who fucking knows how long, which causes you to want to freak out about that, an urge you somehow are able to shove down so you can return to the present.

“Earth to Karkles… you okay there?”

You hope to fucking god that you aren’t blushing. “Yeah, um, sorry, I was just spacing out. Were you saying something?”

“Nah, I was just surprised that you noticed the scar at all.”

You shift nervously. “I’m, uh, perceptive I guess.”

He shoots you a look, something you can’t decode with the missing puzzle piece of his permanently-hidden eyes, but he’s smiling so it must not be that bad. He takes a swig from the bottle seamlessly, before putting it back between you. You wonder if you could get closer to him. Physically, that is. And then you question why the hell you thought that. There’s a sudden hesitancy on Dave’s face when he realizes he actually has to tell the story. Or at least, you think that’s why it’s there. 

“You know those swords on my wall? Above the turntables?”

You nod, and he continues. “Well, my brother, he’s been… teaching me how to spar. Cause he’s crazy good at it. One day, during, uh, training, I misstepped. And he got me. No big deal, happened a while ago, and I kind of deserved it anyways. I’m fine now.”

There’s something extremely off about his voice, something you don’t like. You can tell that whatever it is, he doesn’t want to talk about it. So you launch into some kind of inane ramblings, cause that’s just what you do. “Man, you’re lucky that he got you where he did! That could’ve taken your eye out if it had just been a tiny bit to the left. Though, with those glasses a permanent fixture of your face, you’re probably pretty well protected. Why do you wear those things all the time anyways?”

You don’t realize you were even thinking about asking the question until it’s out of your mouth. You’ve been curious, of course, but it always seemed like a thing not to ask. At first, you’d thought it was just a part of the annoying facade of coolness he put up at school, but as you got closer to him and started hanging out with him and his friends outside of class, he’d never taken them off. Not in restaurants, not even at John’s house, where the five of you hung out the most. You’d figured he had his reasons. He doesn’t seem upset that you asked, though, he just smirks.

“Nuh uh, it’s my turn now. You can ask me that after I ask you _my_ question.”

You roll your eyes, grabbing the bottle from him. “I wonder if Rose and Kanaya are getting nasty on your couch yet.”

He laughs. “God, no, if they’re doing it they’ve probably broken into Bro’s room, as inadvisable as that would be, seeing as it’s basically a war zone in there. But nah, Rose is more the type for overly dramatic confessions of love, if she’s not drunk-crying in the bathroom because she believes she’ll be alone forever. But back to the game, what’s the most embarrassing thing you believed when you were a kid?”

Your answer hits you like a truck and you shoot Dave a long-suffering look before you take a drink. Hmm, not so bad anymore. Or maybe you’re just drunk. You have no idea. Your frame of reference for drunk is just that time you drank away your Terezi-related sorrows, so you’re not exactly sure what it’s supposed to be like. You do know that there’s no way you’d be sharing this story if you were sober though.

You sigh deeply before beginning your story. “Okay, this is all the fault of Kankri fucking Vantas, father of the goddamn century. So I was one of those nerdy little kids who loved reading books cause I didn’t have any friends, right? And when I was a kid, I was, you know, actually smart and shit. Smart enough to read adult books without too much trouble. There was still stuff I didn’t understand, but I got the general gist of them. Well, over Christmas break when I was eight, I stumbled upon this series of books that belonged to Kankri. They looked interesting, so I swiped the from his shelf and hid them in my room. The first one was called Mobius Double Reacharound, and I was hooked by the time I’d finished the first chapter. I read the entire series by the time break ended, cause I was bored, stuck at home, had pretty much no friends to hang out with, and so I had nothing better to do. It was about these aliens called trolls, on the faraway planet of Alternia, and holy shit was it not something I should’ve read at that age. It was one of those adult sci-fi fantasy type series with lots of violence in a soul-crushing dystopian society and it was basically a huge ass angst fest where half of the characters died by the end of the second book cause none of these dumb fucking alien teenagers could keep themselves from trying to murder each other at all times. And eight-year-old me fucking devoured it like it was a loaf of fresh bread and I was a starving Victorian peasant boy. I loved it so much that I convinced myself that I was secretly a troll living on earth. And the worst part is, these trolls had this like, caste system based on blood color, and what color your blood was basically determined how you’d be treated by others and shit. Well, having red blood, like, you know, humans do, was this “scary mutation” that if anyone knew about, would get you killed. So imagine, tiny Karkat, completely convinced that not only was he an alien from outer space, but he was an outcast mutant alien from outer space. It was, ohhhh, it was bad. Like, I was already an annoying little shithead when I was a kid, but that just made me a thousand times worse. I once had a meltdown, just in the middle of the living room, unprompted, cause I was afraid the fucking alien cops were coming to kill me. Kankri didn’t know what the fuck to do with me. I’m pretty sure that was the only time in my entire life that I managed to make him speechless. Which, you know, kind of makes it all worth it. Pissing Kankri off is kind of my main job in life, and to do something worthy of making him speechless? You have no idea how hard that is.”

You think Dave started laughing when you’d revealed that eight-year-old you had convinced yourself that you were a troll, and it was kind of impressive that he was still going at it by the time you’d finished. You knew your tendency to get off topic and ramble often ended up making your stories uninteresting, so it was kind of nice to make someone laugh. Especially if that was one Dave Strider, who was so exasperatingly good at doing the same to you. He eventually gets himself back together, and smiles at you, something that no matter how many times it happens, you’re not sure you’ll ever be able to get over.

“So, is Kankri like, your dad?”

Oh, yeah, you sometimes forget that normal people generally don’t call their parents by their first names. You’d meant to explain that earlier. “Yeah, but when I was thirteen, I got into an argument with him that ended in me telling him that until he starts acting like an actual father instead of a weird pissed off ghost that haunts the home, spouting random bullshit whenever he runs into a real human, which is always me, I’m not gonna call him dad. And I am nothing if not stubborn. It used to piss him off to no end. It was great. I think he’s gotten used to it though, so maybe one of these days I’ll flip it around and just out of the blue call him “Daddy.” See what he does.”

Dave snorts, bursting into laughter yet again. “Jesus!”

You grin. “Yeah. I’ve got a weird relationship with him. I was born when he was pretty young, and he made the “ultimate sacrifice” by raising me by himself when my mom wanted nothing to do with me. I don’t even actually know who she is. Probably a one night stand he had when he was drunk. He’s kind of incredibly shitty at being a father and all that, so I purposefully antagonize him as much as possible, for the fun of it.”

Dave softens. “I get that. Bro’s, cool, he’s a mastery of irony and he has a lot of knowledge on weird shit that every so often, he decides to impart on me. But I don’t think he really knew what he was getting into when he started taking care of Dirk and I. So, uh, sometimes he isn’t the greatest at being, like, the responsible adult, and stuff, especially when we were kids. I don’t think he knew anything at all about children, and he didn’t exactly make the effort of learning. We were just kind of thrust on him and he dealt with it.”

You shoot Dave a soft smile. “Kankri’s the same way, I think. He was, like, twenty, when I was born, and thinking about the fact that that’s only three years older than I am now- I don’t know. It doesn’t make how he acts any better, but it’s just that, he never grew up. He always acts like what he has to say is more important than anything else in the entire fucking world and, god, he never shuts up. He’s always going on these long-winded rants about society and politics and all kinds of bullshit, and you’ll just stand there, trapped, for twenty minutes without being able to get a single goddamn word in. And when you can finally fucking abscond back to your room, you realize that somehow, within that twenty-minute speech, he’s worked in seven or eight little passive-aggressive fucking quips about how you should be thankful that he took you in and didn’t abandon you to the foster system, how much he had to give up to raise you properly, how you never live up to your potential, how he used to believe you were destined for great things and now all you do is leave your socks all over the goddamn house, how emotionally unstable you are all the time, how you’d be so much more well-adjusted than you are now if you just tried to calm down now and then, and just how much better of a person he is than you. I’m just… I’m fucking sick of it.”

Your hands are balled up into fists and there are tears in your eyes and you don’t know when that happened but you’re just so goddamn emotional. You wonder if you’re just a sad drunk, cause you’re never this emotional. You don’t cry, at least not anymore. You used to be a huge crybaby as a kid, but then you learned that showing vulnerability is the ultimate weakness and you turned all your feelings into being angry at the world. You try to calm yourself down, before realizing how worried Dave looks. You have to say something.

“I’m… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get all worked up like that. And just when we’d managed to get the game back on the track of not being heavy, too.” You tried to joke your way out of it but it just falls flat.

And suddenly, he’s hugging you. You tense up, you always do whenever someone touches you without warning. You’re not the most touchy-feely person, which is just a less concerning way of saying you’re touch starved as fuck. After a second, you relax into Dave’s hug. It’s incredibly comforting, and you can feel the tension draining from your body. He smells nice, and his arms around you are warm. You may be drunk, but you think you might love him. This is not a groundbreaking statement. You’ve known this for the last two months. Basically ever since you laid eyes on him, you’ve at least known just how pretty he is. Oh, you’ve tried to bury it. You’ve convinced yourself that you find him annoying and that he’s vastly overrated. Natural defenses and all that. Can’t get attached if you spend all your energy pretending he’s a prick. But he’s not. He’s kind, and he’s funny, and he seems to just get you without having to even try. You swallow down the urge to cry, and just focus on breathing. You follow Dave’s breaths, and it calms you down. Eventually, he lets go, and without thinking, you move so that you’re sitting next to him instead of across from him. The two of you are pressed up shoulder to shoulder, sitting against his bed, and you feel like you shouldn’t have done that, but he’s not moving and neither are you, so maybe it’s okay.

His voice is soft when he breaks the silence. “I just want you to know, I’m here. Whenever you want to talk about stuff like that. I’m here, and I get it. You can talk to me.”

You look over at him, and there’s no pity in his expression. Just understanding and sincerity, and that fact makes you want to cry all over again. Instead, you smile. “Thanks. I, uh, I really appreciate it. Now, do you want to get back to the game? Cause I still want to know why you wear those glasses all the time.”

He smirks and grabs the bottle. “Alright, if you insist.”

He drinks and you do not watch the way his adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. Nope, you’re definitely not doing that. Why would you be doing that? That would be stupid. He looks at you with a lazy grin as he puts the bottle down, but there’s something fragile there that you can just barely pick up on. He’s nervous.

“So, you wanna know why I’ve always got my sick-ass aviators on. Besides the fact that they look cool as hell and help greatly with my aloof image.”

You roll your eyes. “Get _on_ with it.”

He pokes your shoulder, smiling. “I’m trying to. The answer’s not as interesting as you’d expect, for the most part. My eyes are really sensitive to light, especially artificial overhead lights, like the ones in pretty much every building on Earth. Though being outside on sunny days isn’t great for them either, unless I’ve got these bad boys on. I honestly can’t remember the last time I spent more than a few minutes anywhere brighter than semi-darkness without my glasses on, but from what I can recall from when I was a kid, I get pretty bad migraines, like, lie down in a dark room for half an hour type of migraines. Can’t think or concentrate on anything but the pain for more than thirty seconds type of migraines. Sometimes even these days if I spend all day in really bright places I’ll get a headache, but as long as I’m wearing my sunglasses it’s not too bad.”

You believe him, but something still seems strange about it. You realize that the room you’re in now, Dave’s bedroom, is cloaked in semi-darkness. The only light is coming from a small lamp on the bedside table that gives off a deep red light, and a string of Christmas lights with photos clipped on it that glows every color of the rainbow and swoops low off the ceiling from the corner of his room to the opposite wall. Yet he still had his glasses on. “So why don’t you take them off in here? It’s not very bright in here at all.”

He grimaces. “Cause my eyes aren’t the most normal looking. Albinism runs recessive in my family, and I got the luck of the draw for it. People stare. One time when I was a kid, some random woman came up to me and told me that my “mutation” is a sign that the devil was possessing me, and that I needed to pray to God for forgiveness. The joys of living in Texas.”

“What do you mean?”

He sighs, looking you directly in the eyes, and slips the aviators off. His eyes are blood red. And it’s the coolest thing you’ve ever seen. Your eyes widen, and he tenses. Oh yeah, he’s probably waiting for a reaction.

Your voice comes out softer than you mean it to, and it’s unnecessarily hushed. “They’re so… pretty.”

Fuck, shit, abort mission, that is _not_ the word you meant to use. God, why didn’t you just say cool? You were going to say cool. That’s what you were thinking, you swear! It was just a slip of the tongue and… is he blushing?

He’s looking at you like one word from you could shatter him like a glass sculpture. “You really think so?”

“Yeah. They suit you.” You don’t even have to think about it. You may have kind of meant to say cool, but calling them pretty isn’t exactly a lie. Far from it, actually. They fit him. You don’t know what that means, but it’s true.

The two of you sit in a silence with an intensity like nothing you’ve ever felt for a minute that feels like a nanosecond and an hour all at once. The thought crosses your mind that you really, desperately want to kiss him. It’s a horrible idea, but god, you want it. You wonder, somewhere in the back of your mind, if he might want to kiss you as well. You can’t tear your gaze away from his eyes, and the novelty of seeing them for the first time, here in his room with no one else around, just you and him, inches away from each other, and the fact that you called them pretty and he didn’t joke away the compliment, well, it’s kind of overwhelming. He opens his mouth a tiny bit, hesitancy crossing his face, and god, his emotions are so much plainer to see without his glasses. He seems like he’s about to say something, and then a loud, repetitive chiming comes from the desktop on the other side of the room.

It breaks the tension instantly, and he literally jumps away from you, towards the source of the noise.

“Fuck, Dirk! I, I-I forgot I told him I was going to try to call him today if there was a lull in the party where I could sneak away and talk to him for a minute. I, uh, let me go tell him to call me back later.”

He rushes towards the computer, almost tripping over himself to put the passcode in. You just sit there, and holy fuck, what just happened? You can not be the only one who felt the tension there. Was it really, could it really have been romantic? Was he going to kiss you? You feel like your brain is about to explode, so, being the shitty person you are, you distract yourself by eavesdropping in on Dave and his brother’s video call. Dirk looks a lot like Dave, his blond hair only a shade or two darker, and sensitive eyes must be a family trait, or else he’s just a giant weeb, because he’s wearing large, pointy shades that look like something out of one of the animes that Gamzee used to try to get you to watch with him. You shove that thought out of your mind as quickly as it comes. Not thinking about _him_ any more tonight. You instead try to focus on what Dirk’s saying, as it’s coming out of the computer’s built-in speakers. There’s a pair of nice-looking over-ear headphones sitting on the desk, but they’re unplugged and Dave makes no move to plug them in.

“Hey little dude, why aren’t you wearing your glasses? And how’s your high school blowout going? You burning the place down, leaving nothing but the ashes of a thousand shitty smuppets for Bro to mourn over?”

You can’t see Dave’s expression from where you’re sitting, but you do hear him sigh. “Glasses are cause I was just doing stuff in here, and put them down for a sec. And, I don’t know if you can hear the goddamn Ed Sheehan playing in the background, but I assume it’s going swimmingly.”

Dirk’s face scrunches up. “Who the hell stole my brother and replaced him with someone who’d let a party be disgraced by the sounds of top 40 hits?”

Dave huffs, and you wish you could see his face right now. “They ganged up on me! John and Jade, those assholes, and Rose was being entirely unhelpful by refusing to take a side. So here I am, throwing my very first party, and I don’t even get to pick the music. Not that I’d really want to DJ for the whole night, I’m not Bro, but still, I have some fire playlists. But noooo, if I play music that the population of Summerfield High, currently all in the living room, doesn't know, I’d be “killing the vibe.” I knew fighting it would be a losing battle though, so I gave up eventually.”

“Speaking of Bro, how’s your side?”

You wonder just what the hell that’s supposed to mean, and see Dave stiffen in his chair. He doesn’t say anything for a second, and when he does, his tone has changed completely from the semi-playful annoyance at his friends to something more flat and emotionless. “It’s fine, not infected or anything. I’ve been taking good care of it. Now, uh, I gotta go, I really have to get back to stuff. I’ll text you when the party’s over and we can chat.”

His brother seems equal parts exasperated and concerned at Dave’s quick shut down. “Dave, I know you can take care of yourself, but I just want to make sure you’re okay, you know that. I don’t want any more three am “I’m in the hospital, turns out my arm’s been broken for the last week” texts from you. You know how much I hate not being there to protect you, help patch you up like when we were kids.”

Dave cuts him off there, his tone slightly panicked. “Look, it’s not about that, I know you’re worried, I can handle it, shit’s fine. I just, I think I hear someone trying to start a fight in the living room and if someone breaks the TV, that’s my ass on the line. I’ll call you later, bye!”

With that, the video call ends without the chance for Dirk to get another word in, and Dave swivels in his chair to face you, looking genuinely scared. “How much of that did you hear?”

You look at him and have no idea what to say. Which is a monumental thing, as it’s almost as hard to make you speechless as it is Kankri. “I, uh-“

He sighs, deeply, before running a hand through his hair. The fear dissipates, and he just seems exhausted now. “It was all of it, wasn’t it?”

You stare at the ground and nod. You feel extremely guilty for eavesdropping, although you probably would’ve heard it all even if you weren’t using it as a deliberate excuse not to think about, just, everything.

“It’s okay, not your fault Dirk called at the worst fucking opportunity. So, uh, you heard what he said, about my side, and the hospital text, and wanting to protect me and all that.” His voice goes bitter when he says the words “protect me” and you don’t know what that means.

You nod again, still refusing to look at Dave. He sighs, getting up from the chair and flopping down on the ground right next to you again. This time it’s him making the decision to sit with his side pressed up against yours, and you finally look him in the eyes, and there’s something hardened in them.

“Well, when I said I was here if you wanted to talk about your shitty dad, when I said that I “got it,” I uh, meant it. And when I said that Bro has been, um, “teaching me to spar” with swords, well, I wasn’t _exactly_ lying.”

With that, he momentarily scoots back, and lifts up the side of his shirt. There’s a large bandage, maybe three or four inches long, that stretches vertically from the top of his hip to just beneath his ribs. And there’s only a corner of his abdomen showing, but you can see that there’s other scars, of all lengths and severities, dotting his skin. Most of them look like they were cuts or gashes, from a sword, and you hold your breath to keep yourself from gasping at the sight of it. You still don’t know what to say. Kankri’s annoying, he’s shitty and passive-aggressive and says things that keep you up at night hating yourself, but he’s never gotten physical with you.

Dave’s voice is hollow. “He calls it training, or strifing. I call it getting the shit beaten out of me while attempting to defend myself with shitty katanas on the roof.”

You’re pretty sure there are words for this somewhere out there, but if you even possess them, they’re stuck so far down your throat that they may as well be in your goddamn stomach. So you reach over and grab onto him tightly, hug him like you’re afraid he’s going to dissolve unless the pressure of your arms holds him together like they’re a plastic Dave-shaped mold and he’s a bucket’s worth of sand at the beach. And god knows if that metaphor even makes sense, because you’re sure as hell some level of intoxicated after who knows how many shots and you feel like you’re about to cry, for the second or third or god knows how many-th, time this evening, and you just don’t know what to do.

What you’re doing now might be working, though, as Dave rests his head on your shoulder and you make every effort to not flinch, somehow succeeding. You can hear him breathing raggedly, and have no idea whether or not he’s crying, seeing as his face is buried in the shoulder of your sweater. You can’t think about this right now, or else you’ll be crying too, and you can’t be a mess, not in front of him, especially when he’s the one who’s really suffering. Instead, you wonder when the last time you hugged someone was. Dave was never very physically affectionate before tonight, and Rose isn’t either. John and Jade are, but they only tried so many times to touch you when you tended to flinch away and swear at them. You should say something about that to them. Ninety-nine percent of the time, Kankri doesn’t come within a three-foot radius of you, a behavior that was probably started from some argument years ago, thought which of you instated the no-touching rule, you can’t remember anymore. You think back to the summer, then, which was mostly spent locked inside your room, chatting online with Sollux, Eridan, or, when you could pry him away from Vriska for five minutes, Tavros.

After a minute or so of thinking, you finally remember, and it’s not the best memory. Tavros’ seventeenth birthday party, back in June. Only three weeks after the incident with Gamzee. Someone had brought pot brownies, and you’d all gotten high off your asses. Vriska had left early, pissy cause Tavros “wasn’t giving her enough attention.” He was crying on the couch, cause as always, he hadn’t done anything wrong but was trying to find something to blame himself for. And you’d stumbled over and basically collapsed on top of him, hugging him until you’d started crying too, telling him that he couldn’t keep doing this, that didn’t he see what she was doing to him? You think you’d told him at one point that you’d already lost Gamzee, you couldn’t lose him too. Which is kind of bullshit, seeing as you pretty much lost Tavros months ago when he first started getting wrapped up in Vriska’s manipulation. That night was the only time you’d ever gotten him to admit that what Vriska was doing was abuse, though he’d followed it up with “but I love her.” You’d thought you’d made progress with him about his relationship for the first time in months. And then the next day he’d told you he didn’t remember talking about her with you at all.

Thinking of Tavros and Vriska’s abusive relationship brought your thoughts all the way back around to Dave and his Bro. You think the image of his scarred abdomen might live forever in your brain, now. And something from earlier clicked in your head, from when he was talking about John. He’d said he, at age ten, had been able to beat up three sixth graders who were bullying John. You’d just taken that at face value as either an exaggeration, some kind of crazy luck, or that the bullies hadn’t actually been that strong, and had just been courageous in numbers. But if his Bro had been “training” him way back then, well, having to regularly defend yourself about someone fourteen years older than you was one hell of a way to get good at fighting others, probably. You can’t really picture a ten-year-old Dave, but that doesn’t stop you from thinking about him at this age, katana in hand, with the same scared expression he’d worn when he’d realized you had heard Dirk talking about Bro’s abuse. The image makes you nauseous. Before you can throw up or drive yourself deeper into a spiral, though, Dave is gently pulling away from you.

He’s sitting directly in front of you now, and there are definitely tears in his eyes. If he wasn’t crying before, he at the very least looks like he’s about to. Your mind swirls with so many questions that you can’t even think straight as you look him in his beautiful red eyes, and he answers them all before you even open your mouth to ask if he’s alright.

“It’s been going on since I was eight, though Dirk says that on his tenth birthday, he received his first note to come to the roof for a strife, so I guess that means he started with Dirk before making me join in on the fun. I’ve thought about running, Dirk and I both have, but in the end, we’d just end up at the mercy of the foster system, and with the stories about what goes on there… I’d rather take the hell I know than a hell I don’t. Because at least I understand Bro, to the extent that any one person _can_ understand him. I know how he works, what sets him off, when a strife is routine and when it’s because I fucked up, I can read his silence accurately as stoicism versus anger, probably about eighty percent of the time. And one Dirk left for college, there were only a couple years left before I turned eighteen and could leave too, so it didn’t really matter anymore. The other three know it’s going on, but that doesn’t mean I ever talk about it. The extent I mention it to them is when it directly affects them, like when I abandon a conversation because of a strife, or show up to school with a fresh cut somewhere visible and they ask. And I’m warning you now, most of the time, I’m probably not going to want to talk to you about it either. Because after a while, what more is there to say about it? My brother abuses me, I can’t do jack shit about it, nobody can, life moves on. I’ll be eighteen in six months and moved out the second I have enough money for an apartment. I can deal with it until then.”

At some point, you’d started crying, but Dave doesn’t until he’s done talking. His hair is falling over his face, and without thinking, you brush it out of his tear-laden eyes. He looks at you with a tenderness you’ve never seen in anyone before, and god, you’re falling so hard for him. You recognize, though, that this isn’t the time for your gay thoughts, it’s the time to attempt, and probably fail horribly at, reassuring him. You’re not good at comforting people, far from it, but you can try your best.

“You don’t have to deal with this alone. I’m here for you, whenever you need me to be. Doesn’t matter if it’s three am on a school night, if you need to talk, just send me a message or give me a call, I’ll be there. If you need a place to stay for the night, well, I know just how easy it is to sneak in and out of my bedroom window. And Kankri’s dumb as hell, so as long as we’re careful, he won’t even notice you’re there if you don’t want him to know.”

Dave lets out a wet laugh at that, having mostly stopped crying. “Thanks. I really appreciate you, Karkat. I know we haven’t known each other for all that long, but even when you’re being your grumpy self, I really like being around you. I always feel like you’re so easy to talk to. I don’t know why, you just are.”

You smile sheepishly. “If you can keep a secret, the permanently grumpy and pissy thing, is, uh, kind of, somewhat, an act. I mean, after doing it for so many years, it’s seeped its way into my real personality more than it probably ever should’ve, but it at least started out as just a way to get everyone to leave me alone. Cause I’d rather, well, scare people away, or make them think I’m a huge prick, then actually let them in. And it works. But you, with your Strider determination that you swear by, you’ve managed to shove and smooth-talk your way through all of my defenses, and drag your friends in along with you. I don’t know how you did it. I’ve been working at this since I was ten years old, and I haven’t let a single person in except those I _knew_ I could trust since then. Maybe it’s just cause you didn’t give up, no matter how much I tried to push you away. No one’s ever really done that before.”

He smiles, and you’re positively in love with the way it reaches his eyes. “See, I told you I had a sixth sense about you. I knew that under all those layers of spininess and anger, there was something special about you. And I was right.”

You, god, you don’t even begin to know how to feel about that. Confused, mostly. “You think there’s something _special_ about me? God, I don’t know where you went wrong, but-”

He cuts you off. “I think you’re incredible, Karkat.”

You just stare at him blankly. “I, I, you know you’re like, fucking breathtaking, right?”

The words you just said don’t really sink in, seeing as you’re still reeling from Dave calling you _incredible._ You just, knew you had to get it out there, that you just didn’t understand how someone so perfect could ever think you’re _incredible._ He looks positively stunned by your words, and it suddenly comes crashing down on you exactly what you insinuated, how you just pretty much told him that there is absolutely nothing platonic about your feelings for him.

And then he’s kissing you. Holy _shit_ he’s kissing you. You’ve kissed your fair share of people, most of the time without much emotion behind it, but that just makes everything about this so different. Dave fucking Strider is kissing you and god, if everything about this wasn’t so vividly real, you’d swear you were dreaming. You think this might just be the greatest feeling on planet Earth. He pulls away, but there’s no way you’re letting this go, not just yet, so you chase the kiss with a second one. You can feel him laugh against your lips and for once, you’re not at all embarrassed by your audacity, because you need to kiss him like you need to breathe, except maybe more so, because you’ve lived seventeen years of your life without this feeling and you never want to go without it again. Eventually, you break away, because you may or may not have unconsciously been holding your breath, and no matter how much more you need the feeling of kissing Dave, you do still need to breathe.

“Fuck. You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that. I don’t even think I have any idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.”

Dave giggles and rolls his eyes, something you realize that you’ve never seen him do before. It’s fucking adorable. You’re smiling now, and he kisses you on the tip of your nose, which is something no one’s ever done to you before. You love it. You want to return the motion, but think of something better. You kiss the spot just underneath and to the right of his right eye, where the small scar from his brother rests. He freezes, and a bolt of anxiety shoots through you that you’ve done something wrong, already, couldn’t go five minutes into something good without messing it up, but he interrupts your self-deprecating train of thought by returning his lips to yours. And you feel like you could cry, but this time from relief. Because you didn’t mess anything up.

You kiss him, and he kisses you, and the two of you do that for god knows how long, before you break away and finally talk about whatever the hell is going on. You get to tell him that you’ve kind of had a crush on him the whole time, but your repression game is just that strong. And he gets to tell you that he wants to be your boyfriend, and for you to be his boyfriend. He teases you for how much you’re blushing at him bringing out the “b-word” as he called it. You just stick your tongue out in response, before saying that you kind of never wanted anything more than to be his boyfriend in this moment. Of course, then you get to tease him about how much he’s blushing. You think that for once, maybe everything is going to be okay. And you might just be right.


End file.
